DEGEN DE13 Cranked Solar FM AM SW Receiver with Flashlight/SOS alarm/rechargeable cell phone for emergency and outdoor use (green)

The radio arrived quickly after ordering and was packaged well. It is very compact considering all the features that it has. Build quality is good given what it cost. It does not get moved around much as I bought it mainly to listen to the radio while working in garage and garden. As a result, I cannot say how it would cope if you were to be using it for camping, etc and carrying it in a rucksack as the aerial may catch on things and is a little flimsy. Easy to operate and the radio is loud and clear enough for what I use it for. I was surprised at how loud it was given the small speaker that it has. Like the fact that it has AM/FM and SW bands. Can always find something to listen to. The torch facility has been useful to have around the garage. Can be powered by cranking and charging the internal battery, solar or 3 AAA batteries. The crank mechanism is smooth but not too sturdy. It will charge the internal battery with little effort. Cannot comment on how useful it would be to charge a phone. Do not know how efficient the solar panel is as it does not get much exposure to sunlight. AAA batteries appear to last well given the amount of time I use it. Please note that the internal battery is not installed when it arrives and you have to attach it yourself. It is awkward to plug it in. I used a small set of tweezers to get the plug into position as my fingers were too big to get into the small battery compartment. Fiddly but not impossible to do. Just take your time. Overall , a good little radio which does the job and which represents good value for money.

Having searched for a small portable radio with as many features/options as possible, this covers every single base. At just L133 x H62 x W47mm and weighing just 256g it will sit on the palm of your hand (equivalent to being slightly longer and same weight as a pack of butter). This makes it easily fit a coat pocket or rucksack lid pocket (the radio not the butter, that would be messy). The supplied re-chargeable batteries can be charged by either Crank, Solar or USB. The Crank Dynamo handle is sturdy, with enough resistance to feel it's actually doing something and folds cleanly away. Solar charging seems to work in even ambient light, not just direct sunlight, as indoors the charging indicator is lit. A supplied USB cable works from any charging source into the DC in 5V. This is then reversed, plugging into the radios USB port to charge phones, MP3/4 or similar items. The connector other end can be detached to charge other items/phones if you have the appropriate connectors. If that isn't enough for you, it will also run on 3 x AAA Alkaline or Rechargeable batteries, amazing! Frequency bands are FM, MW, SW1 and SW2, with a very clear FM sound considering the D50mm speaker size and has a good fine tune of the tuning knob. The 3 x LED torch in one end pushes out a surprising amount of light and one of the LED's can also be selected for a flashing Red light. There is quite a loud siren/alarm facility, a handy D3.5mm headphone jack and a decent operating manual/instructions that are even in Engrish!! If I HAD to give a negative point, it would be the quite small function selector switches, which could allow the radio to be switched on accidentally in a bag or pocket and waste battery power. But I have been that impressed after using it for a while, I have ordered another 2 for each vehicle as now reduced to £20. Bargain!!

Arrived well packaged & within timescale stated. Supplied rechargeable battery pack disconnected for transport, slightly fiddly to connect if you have big fingers but once you work out a technique no problem. All functions work well. Charges from solar (checked with multimeter) & crank. Managed to put some charge in an Alcatel 3088 feature phone & an Alcatel 1B with the crank. As stated will probably give enough charge for an emergency call but don't expect it to fully charge your phone from flat if it has a large battery cappacity. Good signal on SW at night (picks up Radio Exterior de España, Radio Romania International, CGTN (China), BBC World Service) & several other overseas stations when conditions in ionosphere are suitable. Can be boosted with a home made longwire antenna, if desired, clipped onto existing whip antenna. Speaker adequate for a radio of this size & cost. Have heard worse from more expensive radios. FM good quality, MW acceptable. Price has doubled since purchase, otherwise I would have purchased another. Update 14/04/23: After several months of use I found a couple of weak points. The roatating knob on the crank handle came off. It is just fitted to two small, sprung, plastic lugs which broke. My dad reattached it with a bolt and nut. The whip antenna also went loose and I had to remove the screw and squeeze the attachment lugs closer together. The main funtions of the radio continue to work well but Degen could improve the build quality of moving plastic attachment parts as they could fail in an emergency situation.

This device is exactly as it is advertised, and I'd have no qualms about recommending it. I bought this, not for the radio, I have to add, but to use as a cranking charger for USB devices when in the middle of nowhere, and have tested it out on a range of such devices. Basically, it works, and that's all you need to know. First mention, as another reviewer pointed out, I'll pass on the information, the Ni-MH battery in the charger unit isn't connected - classic shipping condition. Pretty simple to connect though. This device will work without the rechargable battery connected, but only for the functions of charging, alarm and torch, so you could be in a field in the middle of the night and use the winder to light up your path, and the light is prretty good for a short distance in front of you. As a signal light (either with the orange flasher or the torch light) it's a pretty neat little package. I plugged this into a couple of iPhones, flipped the switch to the iOS indicator and when the handle is cranked the iPhones registered the current. I've not tested to see how long it'd take to charge up an iPhone completely, but I can see juice getting through, so it'd work in an emergency situation. The radio functions well enough. OK, it's not going to compete with a £1,000 portable radio with all it's radio-type functions, but it's perfectly adequate. You can't use the radio when cranking - well, you can try and all you get is a mish-mash of a sort of wailing screech, which is useless - unless you want to wake someone up in the tent next to yours in the middle of the night! So, the radio will have to run off either the supplied Ni-MH rechargable battery or three AAA batteries (not supplied) you can install in the separate battery compartment. Clearly, the Ni-MH battery can be recharged using the crank handle, but it's not clear from the small piece of paper included in the box whether cranking would charge up rechargeable batteries in the AAA slots. I've not tried that yet. Nor have I been able to test how long the fully charged Ni-MH battery will last. There is a solar power charging receptor, but I've not been able to test that yet either. All in all a neat little device, which could be very useful. and it's small enough (width 13cm x height 6cm x depth 4cm) to be easily stowable. If I was being ultra picky you could argue that, being green, it might get misplaced in the middle of a grassy field, but it comes with a carry strap, so it might be a good idea to clip it to something rather than leave it lying on the ground.

Works okay but not the easiest thing to use based on the function buttons. Nice little thing to have as an emergency back up since it does have a torch, alarm noise and can charge phones. Can be powered by batteries, solar, windup or electrically charged so great for camping in the wilderness. Easily fit in pocket or bag, perfect in glove compartment. We use ours mostly in the house for mw option.

Not just for emergancys, I won't lie I've purchased this as we're as close to Nuclear war right now (03.03.22) since the Cuban blockade. Right, the radios reciption is excellent, and quality of sound for a small radio is more than adequate, and goes quite loud. Build quality is very nice, the dial wheel for scanning the wavelengths is smooth and picks up faint stations, like on SW. USB Slots, earpiece 3.5mm jackplug. The Torch is nice and bright and has two modes, white light, and a single red center flashing light, good for letting others see your position, plus an alarm sound too, all good saftey features. But where it excels is the ways you can power it. Place 3 AAA recharbles in and you can solar charge or use the hand crank handle to charge via its dynamo, plus it has a built in power pack which also is chargeable, so all areas are covered so the unit will always have power, a big must I'm hoping not to put to the test, and hopefully when it finishes, I'll have a nice little radio that can go anywhere. I'd only say take care with the FM Aerial, it's thin and wouldn't take much to break it, but any radio this size would be the same, so it's not a fault. I would recommend this little radio 100%, its well made, nice simple analog Tuner, tons of features which work superbly, it'll even charge your phone, but I haven't tried it yet, but even if you only gave it 10 or 20%, that's the difference between being able to use your phone and not. This purchase was a no brainer, you wont be dissapointed!

I ordered this on Thursday evening and it arrived today (Friday afternoon) - Seller/Amazon emails unread the radio left with my neighbour which is cool and far better than being plonked in the porch! So five stars for delivery/communication. Having connected the battery (English leaflet is good and states this needs to be done as first item)... It sprang into life, but I've given it 1/2 hours of sunshine, a red light on front indicates it is charging. The build quality is surprisingly good - FM/MW/SW1/2 all working fine, the volume is great and signal clear on FM especially, as you'd expect. The dials might be a little fiddly for those who haven't got good digital dexterity, but presents no problem to myself. The light/flashing light/red light all work fine. It came with USB lead and wrist strap, English instructions. I've had it tuned to Radio 4 for several hours now and the signal is good and clear. I haven't tested the cranking mechanism/charging facility yet. It also has earphone facility. I chose this because of its multifunctionality/power options (solar, rechargeable and DC in)... A small unit (fits in hand) I'm surprised by the quality for the price and will probably buy a few more at this price.

I set out to write a rave review of this lovely little compact radio which has been amazing since I bought it in May 2019, but it has just stopped working completely. I suspect the rechargeable batteries, as I have never put standard batteries in as I like to use solar energy. Sad now, I had a lot of faith when I read the reviews, and it just 'feels' nice, compact, chunky design. So, sorry, in my experience, I can't recommend it, although the star rating was for when it WAS working! A few months on and its October 2019 (purchased in May), and I have thrown the old rechargeable battery pack away and seeking to replace it when I find the correct size. However, using it with AAA batteries is fine, it has a good enough tone for portable use at work, and I still love the design, just a pity that I got a duff rechargeable set of batteries!

The radio itself does not work out of the box. You need to connect the user-accessible battery pack (very nice!) or insert 3 AAA batteries before you can operate it. Plugging in the battery pack is a little fiddly, so do this right away when you unpack it. The plastic and manufacturing tolerances don't feel great and somewhat flimsy. The dirt flap on the side also does not fit very snug so don't expect a lot of water resistance. For an emergency style radio it could really do with just a bit better construction. The radio itself does work great. I can even receive US channels from Western Europe in the evening on the SW! A major downside though is that the tuning mutes while changing the frequency. This prevents the user scanning reception by ear on the SW. The FM tuner works fine like this with the volume output being constant. The flashlight on the device is OK in a pinch.

Love this crank Radio No batteries just crank it a few minutes and you will get service for some time everyone should have a couple of these.

Excellent appareil, je recharge facilement au soleil bien dule bonne qualité de son vu la taille petite de cet appareil, excellente réception des ondes pas de parasite pas de bruit de fou je conseille l'acquisition de cet appareil

Awesome little radio. Much smaller then I expected but its a nice little unit. It has good reception and brings stations in loud and clear. It charges well from either the solar panel or the crank handle. Well worth the price.

Me dá aspecto de calidad, dentro de lo que cabe en su precio. Compacta y pesada ( bién ). La calidad de sonido de la radio me ha sorprendido. Muy bién en este aspecto. Coge las emisoras de forma correcta. Muchas opciones de carga, por lo que en caso de emergencia total, siempre te dá más libertad. Viene con la bateria propia desconectada, así que no os olvideis de abrir su compartimento y conectarla ( muy fácil ). En resumen, creo que es una buena compra, y más en estos tiempos que corren. Vá bién tener un artículo de estos en caso de emergencia. Ó por supuesto simplemente escuchar la radio, jeje. Muy recomendable.